4.15.2006

According to the Jerusalem Post, via WashTimes:"The meeting, two weeks ago at a fundraising event by the Hamas office in Yemen, was between Khaled Marshaal and Sheikh Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, said by the United States to be a fundraiser for al-Qaida and a spiritual leader of Osama bin Laden. ...

Zindani praised Hamas suicide bombers and urged people to donate money to the organization, whose political wing won recent Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and now control the Palestinian Authority government. 'The Hamas government is the Palestinian people's government today," Zindani said. "It is the jihad-fighting, steadfast, resolute government of Palestine.'"

"Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and current head of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said the meeting between Marshaal and Zindani underscores commonality between the two groups. "This meeting reinforces the fact that Hamas and al-Qaida come out of the same ideological well-spring of global jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood," Gold said.

The ideology has used Palestinian affairs as a strategic organizing principle for animating, building the global ummah for years. This meeting is hardly surprising. Indeed, when Qazi Hussein Ahmed held rallies in Pakistan for the Jama'at-i-Islami and its related groups, bin Laden would be invited as well as representatives of Hamas.